That’s why today, representatives from environmental, labor, food and farm, consumer rights and other fair trade allies delivered to Congress more than 700,000 petitions opposing “fast track”--a piece of legislation that would push these harmful trade agreements through Congress without any meaningful oversight or assurances that the trade pacts would actually benefit workers, families, and the environment. The delivery, which comes days before President Obama leaves for Beijing, China, where leaders will once again make a push to finalize the stalled TPP, sends a clear message that, in the words of Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune, “fast track is the wrong track for Americans who care

about the health of our families and access to clean air, clean water, and land.”

Today’s delivery wasn’t the first time members of Congress has heard that message. As I wrote aboutbefore, back in September nearly 600 organizations including major environmental, labor, civil rights, and consumer rights groups sent a letter to Chairman Wyden reiterating their opposition to fast track and calling for a new model of trade. And, it’s important to note that the recent election results in which the Republicans took control over the Senate and increased their majority in the House does not mean that fast track is any closer to completion. In fact, there is considerable Republican opposition to fast track, and polling from this year demonstrates that giving fast track authority to President Obama is overwhelmingly unpopular among Republicans; 87 percent of Republicans polled, for example, oppose giving fast-track authority to President Obama. The majority of democrats polled also oppose fast-track authority.

So why are members of the public so concerned? Well, take a look at just a few parts of the TPP and you'll understand why. While the TPP has been negotiated in near total darkness, leaks have revealed that the pact is laden with giveaways to big corporations. The pact includes, for example, rules that empower foreign corporations to challenge public interest and environmental policies in private trade tribunals and that give corporations right extract millions or billions in compensation from taxpayers if the corporation wins. The TPP also would require the United States to automatically approve all exports of liquefied natural gas to countries in the agreement, which would mean more dangerous fracking, more coastal export terminals, and more unstable pipelines here at home.

Despite what some politicians say, corporations aren’t people. But, even worse, when it comes to the world’s biggest trade deals, corporations are actually treated like nation states. Thankfully, a major storm is brewing that could put a crack in this fundamental pillar of the existing free trade regime.

Today’s free trade deals commonly include a set of rules that empower corporations to challenge laws and policies passed by democratically-elected governments in secret trade courts. Increasingly, corporations use these so-called ‘investor-state’ provisions to challenge energy and climate policies, public health and anti-smoking laws, and minimum wage requirements – among many others. That authority effectively gives corporations the same legal standing as other nations when it comes to international trade. While civil society has long opposed this anti-democratic and anti-public interest process, new leadership in the European Union may help bury this system of corporate rights once and for all.

In January 2014, for example, growing public concern over these reckless provisions prompted the European Commission to halt negotiations on this part of the agreement and conduct a public consultation on the issue. About 150,000 people responded to the consultation--one of the highest response rates ever for a Commission consultation. The Commission is now compiling the results.

What do Halloween and the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have in common? Both are packed with things that should make your skin crawl. Earlier this October, I joined a meeting hosted by the Catalonian Campaign against the TTIP in Barcelona to discuss the many risks of the TTIP, a massive proposed free trade agreement between the U.S. and EU. That same weekend, towns and cities across Europe protested the TTIP and its corporate-empowering, fracking-enabling rules. These events reconfirmed that Americans and Europeans share many reasons to fear the trade agreement, including these ghastly features:

1. Secret trade agreements are like vampires. In Barcelona, trade policy expert Susan George stated that, like vampires, the TTIP could not survive the light of day. Even though the agreement would have huge impacts on everything from the food we eat to the energy we use, the European Commission and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative are negotiating the TTIP in complete secret. The U.S. and EU public, press, and government officials are not allowed to see the negotiating texts.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., hundreds of “trade advisors,” almost exclusively representing corporations, do have access to key texts and are actively influencing the pact. Our government should allow the public, at the very least, to have the same access to the texts as Halliburton has. And as Senator Elizabeth Warren has stressed, “If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the U.S.”

2. Rise of the toxic sludge (in your drinking water). The U.S. is pushing for the TTIP to contain rules that empower corporations to sue governments—before private trade tribunals— over virtually any policy that the company claims could impact its expected future profits. Similar rules in the North American Free Trade Agreement have empowered a U.S. oil and gas firm to sue Canada for $250 million in response to a fracking moratorium in Quebec, demonstrating the threats that “investor-state” rules pose to countries and provinces’ policy-making processes.

Like in North America, countries across Europe are implementing fracking moratoriums and restrictions, often to the frustration of fracking companies. For example, when France implemented a fracking moratorium in 2011, a U.S. oil and gas company took this decision to court—and lost. Now corporations are pushing for the TTIP to give more “protections” to oil and gas companies, which – based on the NAFTA precedent— would allow foreign companies to circumvent government and court decisions over energy policies, and sue taxpayers over policies that companies deem inconvenient. In light of the air and water contamination and climate-disrupting emissions associated with fracking, the last thing communities need is rules that threaten their ability to regulate it.

3.The rise of Frankenfoods. In the EU, safeguards around genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are some of the strongest in the world. The EU bans or restricts the import of GMO products and requires that GMO foods are labelled. The U.S., however, has no national laws requiring the labelling of GMO foods, even though polls indicate that more than 90 percent of Americans would support GMO labelling. In response to citizens’ concerns, more than 20 states have introduced over 60 bills that would require GMO labelling in these states—proposed rules that GMO-producing agribusinesses vehemently oppose. The TTIP would give industry a new vehicle to threaten these policies, as the trade agreement would likely identify GMO-labelling policies as “barriers to trade,” which could both stymie U.S. states’ efforts to label GMOs, and threaten the EU’s GMO regulations.

Be afraid. The TTIP could prevent countries and states from implementing policies that protect communities and stabilize the climate. Fortunately, people in the U.S. and EU are mobilizing to highlight the many tricks— and no treats— of this pact. With enough public pressure, U.S. and EU negotiators may finally be compelled to release the TTIP texts. Then we’ll see whether the TTIP can survive the light of day, or will go the way of the vampire.

One result of neoliberalism, writes Mark Bittman in the New York Times, is that “some corporations are more powerful than governments.” This message was a theme of many of the signs and chants at the People’s Climate March, where more than 400,000 participants came together in New York City, many denouncing corporate greed at the expense of a sustainable planet. And nowhere is that power divergence more apparent than in free trade pacts, where a provision called “investor state dispute settlement” (ISDS) empowers corporations to sue governments over nearly any policy that a corporation alleges would reduce its expected future profits.

The Dominican Republic, for example, faces two new corporate challenges to its environmental policies. Instead of supporting the Dominican Republic’s right to implement environmental safeguards, the U.S. is pushing to expand these “investor” rights in new trade agreements currently under negotiation—the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the U.S. and the European Union.

Under the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), Corona, a Florida-based construction materials company (not to be confused with the beer), has announced a case against the Dominican Republic for $100 million because the Dominican Republic denied Corona an environmental license to mine for construction materials after citing concerns about the proposed project’s risks to waterways. Separately, three U.S. investors are threatening to bring a case against the Dominican Republic for not allowing them to “extend” a resort—which already includes luxury homes, a restaurant with a rotating floor and tennis courts— into a neighboring national park. The coveted “extension” would allow the developers to construct a second restaurant, spa, and “world-class boutique hotel.

On September 21, I joined more than 400,000 community members on the frontlines of climate disruption, environmentalists, workers, students, parents, and others to demand action on climate and to claim our collective rights to clean water, air, and land.

As someone who has spent many years in the halls of Congress and United Nations climate conventions calling for strong climate action, this diverse, public, outspoken, and in-the-streets action was a beautiful, incredible feat that signals a tipping point in the climate movement that policymakers will not be able to ignore.

But there is another tipping point that will affect the success of the climate movement: the free trade tipping point.

The health of our planet depends on our ability to make big changes in our economy. These changes include moving beyond fossil fuels and building local green economies. However, our current model of free trade, which is written into agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and free trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), threatens nearly every aspect of this much-needed economic transition. And yet, the U.S. is currently negotiating massive new free trade pacts, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with 11 Pacific Rim nations and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union. These deals would severely restrict the ability of governments to restructure our economy and address the climate crisis.

If these deals are beat-back, we can open up space for governments to embrace a new model of trade that is compatible with—even supports—efforts to combat the climate crisis. If these agreements move forward, they lock in a new set of rules that will further hinder our ability to solve the climate crisis.

Let’s take a deeper look at just how our trade rules are getting in the way of climate progress.

Corporate challenges to climate and clean energy policies: In order to combat the climate crisis, we must move beyond fossil fuels and embrace clean energy. However, investment rules in free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties threaten our ability to do so. The rules actually empower corporations to sue governments, in the secrecy of private trade tribunals, over laws and policies that corporations allege reduce their profits, including protections from dirty fossil fuels. Such rules have allowed corporations including Chevron and ExxonMobil to launch nearly 600 challenges against almost 100 governments. Increasingly, corporations are using these perverse rules in free trade and investmentagreements to challenge energy and climate policies, including a moratorium on fracking in Quebec, a nuclear energy phase-out and new coal-fired power plant standards in Germany, and requirement for a pollution clean-up in Peru. Nearly 60 percent of so-called investor-state cases are decided in favor of the investor (making taxpayers foot the bill to the corporation or investor) or settle (sometimes weakening the policy, as happened in Germany). When governments “win,” they just get to keep the policy in place and are often stuck with part of a legal tab averaging $8 million per case.

There’s growing opposition to trade deals that the Obama administration is pushing and to so-called fast-track trade authority, an outdated mechanism that would limit Congressional and public oversight over trade negotiations. From national polls showing that a majority of Americans oppose putting the Trans-Pacific Partnership on the fast track to demonstrationsacrossthe country against fast tracking such deals, there’s no denying that the tides are turning.

The U.S. is negotiating what could be two of the world’s biggest trade deals -- the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Pacific Rim nations and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union. But the meat of these deals goes beyond traditional trade issues like tariffs -- they deal with important everyday things, like our jobs, the safety of our food, and our access to clean water and air. The dangers of these deals seem endless, yet they’re being rushed through in near complete secrecy.

Click image to download full infographic.

Trade negotiators are writing these deals behind closed doors, with little to no involvement of the public and our elected officials. Despite this, there is still a push in the U.S. administration and among some in Congress to even further limit public and Congressional oversight of these massive trade pacts. If fast track were to pass, for example, signed trade pacts like the TPP and TTIP could be rushed through Congress with a guaranteed vote in 90 days, a maximum of 20 hours debate, and no possibility for amendments. In other words, fast track makes it impossible for Congress to ensure that trade pacts actually deliver for workers, communities, and the environment.

That’s why today, nearly 600 national, regional, and local organizations are reiterating their opposition to fast track and calling for a new model of trade. The time is now to fix the flawed model of trade that has cost us jobs and degraded our environment.

If you’re one of the 29 million Americans that can’t wait to tune in to this week’s Shark Week spectacular, you’re probably familiar with the incredible power, grace, and agility of the world’s 460-plus species of sharks.

For the past 27 years, audiences have been captivated by the annual week-long tribute to the world’s majestic aquatic predators. But what you might not realize is that sharks are in serious danger.

In fact, tens of millions of sharks are mercilessly killed each year. More than 160 species of sharks are categorized as at risk of extinction, ranging from near threatened to critically endangered. But what’s the biggest threat to these crucial and magnificent creatures? Shark finning.

Shark finning is the increasingly rampant and highly profitable process of stripping sharks of their fins and throwing the sharks back into the ocean, very much alive but unable to swim. This leaves the helpless sharks at risk of bleeding to death or becoming prey for another predator. Shark fins -- the most profitable part of a shark -- are then traded in a billion-dollar annual market. For centuries, shark fins have been mainly used in the wildly expensive shark fin soup, a delicacy in some countries.

Thanks to the work of the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter and allies, the Texas Democratic Party has taken an important stance on international trade policy by resolution and including a party platform plank that explicitly opposes “fast-track” legislation and demands transparency in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations.

President Obama has pushed for fast-track authority, which limits the role of Congress to casting yes-or-no votes on trade pacts, limiting debate, and forbidding amendments. To make matters worse, the TPP has been negotiated in near secrecy for more than four years, without meaningful opportunities for public input.

The Texas Democratic Party’s statement reflects an alliance between labor, environmental, and human rights activists, enjoining U.S. trade policy to “combat child and slave labor, sweatshops, environmental degradation, and other practices that turn global trade into a race to the bottom”--as the platform states.

Hal Suter, Chair of International Trade and Labor Relations at the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, co-chaired the inaugural Fair Trade Caucus at the Texas Democratic Convention with representatives of the United Automobile Workers and the Communications Workers of America, a coalition that was integral to the resolution’s passage. David Griggs, Political Chair of the Lone Star Chapter, was selected for the Platform Advisory Committee and led the energy and environment sections of the Texas Democratic Platform. The new caucus attracted two Congressional representatives: Reps. Al Green and Eddie Bernice Johnson.

Organizers expected an audience of 20 to 30 at the caucus as the resolution was being discussed.

“Not only did it go over, they needed to give us a bigger room!” Suter said.

As 2014 brings in a new wave of global temperature records, countries implementing policies that reduce climate disrupting pollution should be lauded for their efforts.

But a report released today by the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth Europe, Friends of the Earth U.S., Transport & Environment, Greenpeace, and Council of Canadians presents new evidence that the U.S. government is joining the Canadian government and oil lobbyists in pushing the European Union (EU) to weaken an important climate policy called the Fuel Quality Directive (FQD). Even more troubling, U.S. efforts to include the FQD in negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) -- a free trade agreement being negotiated in secret between the U.S. and EU -- could critically undermine the EU’s ability to lower climate emissions.

The EU adopted the FQD in 2009 as means to reduce the carbon intensity of transportation fuels and ultimately lower transportation emissions by six percent by 2020. In 2011, the European Commission drafted proposed guidelines for how fuel suppliers could implement the policy and proposed that different types of fuels be classified by their climate emissions, meaning some fuel sources would be labelled as having higher greenhouse gas intensity values than others. Such a system would encourage fuel suppliers to switch from dirtier fuels to cleaner types in order to meet the emissions reduction target.

Not surprisingly, oil corporations and their lobbyists on both side of the Atlantic have used every tool at their disposal to undermine the FQD. They have been joined by the Canadian government --led by the infamously pro-tar sands Prime Minister Stephen Harper-- and argued that the FQD discriminates against Canada’s tar sands. Canada has even threatened the EU with a World Trade Organization challenge. In reality, the EU’s proposed science-based approach would label all carbon intensive sources of oil including liquefied coal, oil shale and tar sands as having high greenhouse gas intensity-- not discriminate against countries.

Sadly, the United States government, at the urging of the oil industry, has joined Canada and its oil industry in raising concerns about the landmark climate policy. Moreover, the U.S. now has a new playing field in which to weaken the FQD: negotiations for the proposed U.S.-EU trade pact, also known as the TTIP.

Ideally, a 21st century U.S.-EU trade agreement would allow -- and encourage -- countries to implement policies that would address the growing threat of climate disruption. Instead, today’s report highlights that our own U.S. negotiators seem to be characterizing the FQD as a potential barrier to trade, rather than a necessary policy that should be emulated.

UPDATE! 7/24/2014: Today, more than 35 organizations including the Sierra Club sent a letter to the United States Trade Representative regarding this flawed proposal. In the letter, these groups call on the United States to oppose 1) the inclusion of a specific chapter dedicated to energy or 2) any provisions in the TTIP that could lead to automatic approval of export licenses for crude oil and natural gas. The groups argue that U.S. energy policy must be determined through democratic and transparent domestic processes—not through tradedeals that are negotiated behind closed doors. The U.S.'s role in tackling the climate crisis depends on this. To see the letter and the three dozen signatures, click here.

###

A leaked European Union trade document, published today by the Washington Post, reveals the dangersof the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership for communities and our climate. The document, similar to a previously leaked EU proposal for a chapter on energy which I wrote about here, makes it clear that the EU is looking to use this secretly negotiated trade pact as a back-door channel to get automatic, unfettered access to U.S. fracked gas and oil. If this proposal moves forward, we would see more fracking for oil and gas in the United States, more climate-disrupting pollution globally, and increased dependence on fossil fuels in the EU. So, while oil and gas companies on both sides of the Atlantic rake in profits, everyone else is stuck paying the costs.

To understand the real implications of the proposal, let’s look at some key elements and translate what each means for communities, energy policy, and climate.

1. “The EU proposes to include a legally binding commitment in the TTIP guaranteeing the free export of crude oil and gas resources by transforming any mandatory and non-automatic export licensing procedure into a process by which licenses for exports to the EU are granted automatically and expeditiously. Such a specific commitment would, in the EU’s view, not require that the U.S. amend its existing legislation on oil and gas.”

Translation: The United States should scrap its process for reviewing the impacts of exporting natural gas and crude oil and automatically send the EU our gas and oil.

Here is the background. In the United States, companies must secure a license to export crude oil and natural gas. Exports of crude oil to the European Union are allowed only if the President determines they are consistent with the national interest and they pass an impact assessment. The EU proposal, however, would require the United States to “automatically and expeditiously” approve crude oil export licenses without even considering the national interest. That leaves no room to even examine how more dirty fracking and more dangerous exports will harm communities here at home. Exporting crude oil to the EU would mean windfall profits to Big Oil, more fracking, and more climate-disrupting pollution.

With respect to natural gas, the EU proposal would remove the U.S. Department of Energy’s requirement to review whether exports are in the public interest before approving any exports. The rubber-stamping of exports would lead to increased natural gas production—most of which will come from dangerous fracking. The natural gas would then be transported to export facilities and cooled and liquefied for overseas shipment--an extremely energy-intensive process that creates a dirty climate-disrupting fuel.

2.“EU and U.S. companies would be first beneficiaries.”

Translation: The oil and gas industries will be the first ones to benefit. Not much explaining to do here! Increased fracking for oil and gas and more exports means more profits for corporate polluters. The oil and gas industry may, in fact, be the only beneficiaries. Certainly American communities and our climate would lose out.